Exactly ten days ago, right before bed, my husband asked me where my feelings stood on his pursuing an extramarital situation that has been ‘in the works’ for years now. It began after my situation with R had already begun. It never came to fruition, if you catch my drift.

The previous day, I’d sent my husband a meme conveying the sentiment “I don’t want what I have with you with anyone else.” Because it is true, despite everything. And somehow that made him think it a wise time to ask where I stood on letting him go off and fuck her. IF she ever stops playing this weeeeeird cat and mouse back and forth head game shit that makes me want to scream. I couldn’t fucking stand it when I was single, I really don’t like seeing it happen to my husband from some thirty-something bitch who’s NEVER had to work hard a day in her fucking life and just gets handed amazing shit in life because her family is wealthy and well-connected. And, if my personal judgment has any value to it, she fucking knows I despise her and mirrors the reflection. Could this be my possible insanity talking? I guess. I could also just be totally wrong….but…..I’m usually not wrong about these things. If there’s one thing I grew up alongside, it’s hate. It was one of those the-lady-doth-protest-too-much situations with W and hate. He ALWAYS told us we were NOT allowed to say we hated anything, because hating something is “dancing in the courtyard of the devil” (god it sickens me to quote him because you still fucking hear it, all these years later). So, I might just be too warped, or I’m fucking cynical and astute. All three more like.

So, he asks me how I would feel if things progressed between them in a sexual way. IF she ever actually admits that’s what she’s looking for. IF she’s purposely been building tension all these years. He kept reminding me that he gave me “a lot of space” – meaning he told me it was okay every time i went and spent the night at R’s but really he was letting it tear him up inside but didn’t want to tell me that because then I’d get mad at him so he let it build and build and build to the point where he literally scared me. And he hadn’t done that since our wedding night. And it’s not fair. I spent so many nights terrified as a child, I can’t have it. So, because he was giving me all of this space, that he really didn’t want to be giving at all despite his constantly saying so otherwise, I should do the same now.

NOW.

After I ended things with R on my own over a year ago because I realized I could NOT fucking stand him as a human being and willingly keeping him in my life was like choosing to have cancer (like my mom and her shit husband, right?). I strongly suspect unresolved issues with my father caused that year long fucked up fucking fuck fest but that worries me because them issues is still unresolved…you know?

After he did the Craigs List thing.

After he lost his mind and bashed his head so many times into our coffee table I really thought he probably did permanent damage as his own emotional reaction to when I got justifiably angry over the Craigs List thing. The thing he was going to lie to me about until his own blundering revealed the truth to me. It’s like he couldn’t stand for me getting be the one freaking out, screaming, losing my mind. That’s HIS role. HE gets to be the fucking lunatic and I better shut the fuck up and deal with it and be 100% merry sunshine the second it’s fucking over because I exist to please him.

Do you hear it? Because you are very stupid if you don’t hear it by now. I do and I’m supposed to be the one in denial. I mean I like to pretend like I’m in denial. Most people don’t know me. It took me a LONG time to realize that it’s because they don’t fucking deserve too. I used to think my husband did. But then he pulls shit like what he did last June..and last July…and what he asked me about a week ago Sunday….

After all of that, after we finally started to get better for real. All of sudden this bitch needs volunteers so she’s texting my husband like crazy, constantly asking for him to come out to different shit (yes I went through his texts. oh that’s a sign I don’t trust him? well i fucking don’t, so).

It’s hard to respect someone who does things that seem so goddamn stupid.

And, what, exactly, does he think my answer would be? Go ahead and fuck her, I owe you because you WERE SO COOL the entire time I was with R….OH FUCKING WAIT NO, THAT’S NOT AT ALL WHAT HAPPENED, YOU PSYCHO. [AND EVEN IF HE WAS, which is untrue, why would he want to go back to things being like that between us? He can never shut the fuck up about how great things are, until you find out he’s wallowing in perpetual misery and sorrow and loneliness caused by my being a frigid bitch who’s only sexually interested in other men and he hates me and he wants to kill himself because he’s tried to change his mind and his body all to please me, DESPITE the fact that he also once admitted he started getting really worried about getting into shape when he thought fucking that stupid bitch was a possibility, but I guess he’s hoping I forgot that like he forgets 80% of what he hears]

Like, really, in my heart of hearts, inside, where no one will ever hurt me because I won’t fucking let them (in), I expect two things now 1) He’ll get horny and cheat again, because he was able to talk himself into it being okay once before, why would things have changed? Because he can just fling his “addict” self towards me as a justification. 2) He’ll have another freak out, another fucking scary one, and THIS TIME, THIS TIME, he might hurt someone. More than likely it’d be himself, but who knows when he’s “lost control.”

I guess you can and promise and promise, but when your actions never back your words up, when you keep getting worse despite claims otherwise….Like I always am under the impression things are better, things are getting better…but for how long?

Like that’s the cruel truth to my life, there will ALWAYS be a “But for how long?” in my head. And you know, for a very long time my relationship with my husband didn’t get that question. But now, I feel like I’m just waiting for something more to set him off. I’m not saying I live in constant fear. It wouldn’t come out of nowhere. That’s how it was with my dad. Because of the pharmaceutical cocktail he’s been on for so long, he could have DISTURBING mood swings, like wake up from a nap and just come rampaging out of his room, screaming at me to pick up the living room and turn down the TV, when on any other day neither of those things would be issues. But with my husband, say there’s a situation where I, as a human fucking being, might be getting upset and saying mean/hurtful things. But no, that’s not to be allowed. Only the men get to say hateful, horrible things, if women DARE to match them, or do better as is usually the case, nope, that’ll make the shitty ones flare up, EVERY TIME. I know because I’ve lived it my whole life.

And now, as I near the end of my twenties…my husband’s on that list.

But, I’m not all despair and gloom, after all. I’m willing to keep trying. I feel like we actually do love each other. It’s not his fault I have weird intimacy issues. Not sex issues. But it’s not just sex with him, now is it? But try telling a guy that, please, let me know how it goes for you.

But now, ten days ago, he’s asking if I would be cool with his fucking college girl, while heavily implying I SHOULD be cool about it because he was just SO COOL towards me during the horror show that was my situation with R. I guess it was kind of like a relationship, but the kind a girl with zero self respect would get into. I can’t tell if i have self respect or not, because I have these DEEPLY ingrained reflexes that behave contrarily to my true feelings. Like, if someone is making you angry and they’re a male you have any sort of a personal relationship with, tolerate EVERYTHING they do, using the tried and true method of abused women from a millennia before you: GRIN AND BEAR IT.

But, all right, if you somehow read this far into my dark, dark woods, you’re probably wondering why I don’t just tell him no, right? Well, he’s leading me into telling him no, he’s making it seem like he’s cool with my saying I’m not cool with it. And, have you followed well enough, can you see why I might suspect he doesn’t actually mean the things he assures me of? Which, all right, I guess. I guess I can internally decipher everything you say to me. If you can imagine, I’ve had practice at that.

I figured I would write today, because I know I won’t have a chance for awhile. Next week besides working 7-4 I have to take a training class every day from 7-9 for a part time at home job. It’ll be like a week of being in college again. My federal student loan payments increased by $200/month, so I wasn’t one to reject this offer when it came my way. I’d only thrown my hat into the ring for it August 2016. I have to process 600 bills every month to make my student loan payment.

I also wanted to write today because I really needed to map out my feelings about my husband asking me about this situation. He suggested I write my answer out, but somehow I don’t think this would be received well. I might still print this one post for him and give it to him. Because I mean

Doesn’t he think the whole Craigs List stranger AND our wedding night might balance out my situation with R? How can he feel he’s still owed something in all this? I had group sex with strangers I wasn’t all that attracted to for him, but seeing that I’M still the wronged party is WAY beyond his willingness/capabilities

He is WELL AWARE how upset/angry his continued devotion to the conceited college cunt’s cause makes me, I do nothing to hide it. Which of course means I go very far out of my way to show how I feel, and it’s rarely received warmly I might add because you guessed it I’m bad at it.

Somehow bringing up a time that was horrible for us as justification for why he wants to ruin a time that’s good for us is logical to him, and frankly that just worries me.

Even WITH his Craigs list endeavor, I am WAY more upset and haunted by the memory of his freak out about 8 days later. I can check the exact date, because I took the day off work. I didn’t even do that for finding out about the craigs list thing. I was just so emotionally frazzled, I was more than willingly to use a sick day to not deal with talking to other people. I wrote a freakishly long blog, if you can imagine. So that’s something to think about

The ratio of fucked up behavior tolerated : dished out between the two of us is ASTRONOMICALLY different. Another thing that’s not fair that makes me resent him. These are the things that kill a sex drive. That and the whole adult-with-college-degree-unemployed-seemingly-in-no-hurry-to-be-employed thing that he had going on for a long time following unemployed college years. I’m NOT saying I have some deep desire to like have the same number of drunken freak out/storm outs but I’m saying it would be GREAT if my UNENDING patience could be acknowledged at some point. Yeah, he’s had to be patient with me, like emotionally…obviously…..but I’m SO many other functional/rational/good things, things I fucking made myself, I can make up for a lot. But HE, HE, gets to be the irrational emotional child? And if I ever dare sink to his level, he just has this next one coming for me to show me who’s in power here, and it’s all so eerily familiar.

I’m not trying to say I fear for my safety, I don’t. But part of me now wonders, and it’s a larger part than I’d like, it wonders when it’ll happen again. See, it already knows, it just wonders when. And aren’t we all like that? Those of us living with something we shouldn’t? Something we need to fix, in one way or another? I mean, we all know what it is, we just thought of it. I would have, at least, if I’d read it. Not that I would ever tell anyone.

No one wants to be good at keeping secrets, to have it stem from a lifetime of doing so. And not because they’re interesting just because they’re terrible and you feel this unending source of judgment and shame should stem from any revelations on your part.

I don’t have a whole lot of hope to offer if you also feel this way. But, with hope, you don’t need much, really. Because, there’s at least other people out there who can truly sympathize with you. That means more than you’d realize, particularly when most of your life has been isolating. It’s part of controlling a family, spouse and kids, you isolate the nuclear family as much as possible, no adult friends for the parents, keep the kids on the outs with everyone by encouraging awful behavior, keep mother and brother in laws away…. So the loneliness was certain.

Holy shit it’s late. I’m going to be SO tired during these training classes next week….also I’m very concerned that I probably shouldn’t show up really high and that’s going to get in the way of my usual evening plans.

Well, I hope you’re all doing well. I will let you know what happens if I let him read this.